There has been an unacceptably high number of incidents where ambulance crews have been victims of violence and aggression as well as sexual assaults, when carrying out their duties and sadly it has been difficult to successfully prosecute all the offenders due to a lack of substantial and clear evidence.
To address this situation the Trust consulted with other emergency services and as a result elected to install safety cameras in and around ambulances.
The Trust consulted with Unison Health & Safety on the design and configuration of the replacement emergency ambulance and this included dashboard cameras and safety cameras in the interest of staff welfare.
At present the wiring looms are in place because they have to be routed behind side panels and below flooring which are sealed for IPC reasons, but the recording units have not been installed or connected.
This is because the Trust has still not finalised and jointly signed off with UNISON a Policy which will cover the use, storage, access, governance or established who the restricted number of gate keepers will be that will have the authority to access the recordings and under what reasons they can access, be requested & granted. Once the Policy has been signed off the installation of the camera systems can be finalised but until such time the systems remain dormant.
Once installation has been completed the safety cameras will be able to record sound and vision, but the dash-cams will only make visual recordings so that crews are able to have private conversations throughout their shift.
UNISON have created this survey to establish the level of support for the introduction of these safety cameras and would be grateful if you could set aside a few minutes to complete it in January 2020.
Thank you for taking the survey. Your responses are very important. Stats from the survey will be taken after 31st January 2020 when this survey will close.